<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Starburned by plumedy</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002128">Starburned</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy'>plumedy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Don't Look Now (1973) - Freeform, Father-Son Relationship, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Telepathy, The Force</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:07:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,979</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mandalorian has a premonition of his own death.</p><p>For the Three Day Rental horror prompt "Don't Look Now (1973)".</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Baby Yoda &amp; The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Three Day Rental: A Horror Themed Flash Exchange Round 1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Starburned</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts">Nununununu</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>feat. a silly in-text reference to the title of the original movie and some speculation on the nature of the Child's powers. Not feat.: any strangely lengthy sex scenes with Donald Sutherland</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It made him feel stupid, being spooked by his own dreams like that. But it wasn’t just that they were nightmares. He’d had his share of those. They were mostly the same images and sensations, recycled over and over: fountains of fire and dust; the wine red fabric of his mother’s dress; the cold weightless sensation in the pit of his stomach as the sky opened up above him.</p><p>More recently, he’d had nightmares about the Child. These were dark and confused, full of blue anxious shadows. In them, the whole of known space turned into one malicious tangle of darkness out to get him and his precious charge, stars like a million eyes fixed on the Crest.</p><p>But even though he’d awoken from dreams like that with a terrified jolt, his whole being seized with a sudden need to <em>hold</em>, to <em>protect</em>, they were just that: dreams. Gone after a cup of spiced caf and soon forgotten.</p><p>What he’d experienced for the past two nights wasn’t like that. Those images were less like dreams and more like -</p><p>Well.</p><p>Visions.</p><p>The memory of them clung to him, trailing after him like a shadow even in waking hours. It made him jumpy. Most importantly: it affected the kid.</p><p>And he couldn’t just disregard<em> that</em>.</p><p>The Child was a lethargic shadow of his usual self. Was he picking up on his guardian's anxiety? That thought caused the Mandalorian an intense sense of guilt, and he clamped down on it as best he could. Now wasn't the time to wallow.</p><p>“I’m sorry, kid,” murmured he, wrapping the child’s shivering form in an embroidered blanket they’d picked out at a market on Onderon a few rotations ago. “I’m sorry. I’ll be okay, I promise.”</p><p>The Child made a long sad trill.</p><p>“Hey.” The Mandalorian picked up a slice of star fruit and held it carefully between his gloved fingers. “You haven’t really eaten today.”</p><p>A big brown eye rolled a little in its orbit, regarding the fruit with some interest. He brought his hand up to the kid’s mouth and was rewarded with a few half-hearted nibbles. But the glove was making the whole process damn awkward, and besides, there was the consideration of cleanliness; so he peeled it off and held the fruit with his bare hand.</p><p>His fingers brushed against the Child’s skin and a sudden burst of sensation made him yelp.</p><p>His mind exploded with images. They were the same ones he’d seen in his dreams, but brighter, faster, like a series of holographic flashes.</p><p>A blazing inferno. Blue and yellow flames licking at the corners of his mind, burning every rational thought to coals. Village huts melting like candles. His own visor, dripping with black glass and revealing something bony and unrecognizable inside.</p><p>Anguish and terror, his own and yet not. He hadn’t been scared like this in years – a helpless, mindless feeling, drowning him from the inside.</p><p>The vision stopped as abruptly as it had started. He felt as if he’d been violently flung out of his own thoughts, resurfacing with a gasp. Sweat streaming down his brow tickled the skin of his face, and he experienced a sudden mad urge to tear off his helmet.</p><p>“It’s not my fear, is it?” The Mandalorian whispered. His breath, amplified by the vocoder, was heavy and irregular. “It’s <em>yours.</em>”</p><p>His bare fingers still rested against the Child’s face, and he moved them gently, stroking the fuzzy green skin. The Child’s eyes flicked up at him.</p><p>
  <em>Coo?</em>
</p><p>“Is that what you’re anxious about?” His hands trembled a little as he scratched the large green ear. “That something will happen to us? There’s no need to be anxious. I’m here, kid.”</p><p>That the Child was able to influence his dreams wasn’t especially surprising. A little intimidating, but not shocking after their recent experiences – especially the bit where the kid had pretty much burned a flametrooper to death with his mind.</p><p>Perhaps that had had more of an impact on him than the Mandalorian had thought. That would’ve certainly explained the connection to fire.</p><p>It was easy to forget how much the Child had gone through. Most of the time he was such a carefree, instinctively affectionate presence that the evil others had done to him (<em>the evil </em>you<em> had done to him</em>, the Mandalorian's inner voice added traitorously) did not readily spring to mind.</p><p>“I’m here,” he repeated, gathering the kid into his arms, blanket and all.</p><p>But some uneasy doubt kept nagging and gnawing at him for the rest of the day, even as the Child seemed to brighten and recover.</p><p>Could it be -</p><p>Was it possible the vision was more than just the kid’s fear?</p><p>Surely foreseeing the future was beyond even the Child’s powers.</p><p>In the evening, as the large blue star the locals called Kassari set behind the clay roofs of the village, the Mandalorian sat on the steps of the little hut they’d stayed in for the past six rotations. The smell of fried fruit and creamy local drinks wafted over from the nearby cantina, and insects buzzed in the damp cool air.</p><p>He felt more relaxed now. Tired, as well, as if after physical exertion.</p><p>“You’re way too powerful for your own good, kid,” he said into space, and huffed in faint amusement. He couldn’t see the Child, but he could hear his little three-clawed feet rustling through the grass nearby. “Remind me, why’d I agree to take you in?”</p><p>The Child came rushing over to him, emitting a warbling birdlike sound. The Mandalorian glanced down and saw that the kid was holding a large chunk of something vaguely pastry-like, a mixture of fruit and dough.</p><p>“Where’d you get this from?” There was mild suspicion in his tone. The kid climbed onto his knee and reached out towards the Mandalorian’s helmet in a clear imitation of the Mandalorian’s own earlier attempt to feed him.</p><p>“You shouldn’t steal food, you know.” He tried for strictness and missed by a parsec. “Not even for me.”</p><p>The Child chirped insistently, thrusting the pastry-like thing at him.</p><p>“Okay.” He sighed a little and accepted the sugary offering. “Don’t look now, all right, you little rascal?”</p><p>He could feel the Child’s tiny hands on his knee as he turned his head away and lifted the helmet a bit, stuffing the thing into his mouth. It wasn’t too bad at all, really. Sweet and sour and greasy and just what he needed after the events of the last two days.</p><p>“Thanks,” he said indistinctly through the dough.</p><p>This clearly pleased the kid. He chirped some more and patted the Mandalorian’s lower leg right above the edge of the boot.</p><p>The Mandalorian must’ve been more out of it than he thought, because he felt himself nearly tear up with sudden tenderness under the visor.</p><p>“Off with you,” he muttered as gruffly as he could. “We have to get up early tomorrow. You should lie down and sl-”</p><p>A wave of heat washed over him, closing up his airways. Fire filled his vision - a great roaring sphere with flames blossoming like petals from the white hot core.</p><p>He sprang up and grabbed the kid on pure instinct, shielding the little body with his beskar-coated upper arm. The fire howled as if angered, and the nearest row of huts collapsed into a pile of flaming rubble. Inside one of them- inside one of them was-</p><p>It was in that moment the Mandalorian realized that the whole thing was merely another illusion. However, that hardly made looking at the burning form before him less unnerving.</p><p>He saw his own eyes rolling madly in its orbits. Heard his own voice come out of its mouth, the scream distorted and metallic through the melting vocoder. Felt the familiar overwhelming grief that wasn’t his: the kind of grief he would have never felt for himself.</p><p>Then he was back to reality once more, the Child shaking in his arms like a leaf.</p><p>“I’ll be damned,” grunted he. “What are you doing, kid?”</p><p>But increasingly, he was getting the impression that the Child’s fear was never the source of the vision. Only moments ago the kid had been happy and playful; no, that assault on the senses was forced upon him just as it was forced upon the Mandalorian.</p><p>Perhaps the sorcery within the Child was the source.</p><p>Perhaps it was something bigger than that.</p><p>He still felt vaguely idiotic as he went around the village to rouse its inhabitants. He’d never been much of a believer in fate, and the Creed taught that the future is shaped by those with the strength of conviction. How that squared with the concept of premonitions he wasn’t entirely sure.</p><p>But the Child had already saved him from certain death at least twice, and while believing in a premonition felt stupid, not trusting the Child felt positively <em>jare’la</em> – obliviously reckless.</p><p>“You lot, out,” announced he, kicking the door of the cantina open. “I have it on good authority that you’re in danger.”</p><p>The looks he got in response were dubious. One Chadra-Fan dressed in ragged green robes eyed the Child with an especially pointed expression, as if the mere fact that the Mandalorian was holding something like that lowered his credibility.</p><p>Well, he would soon put an end to such misconceptions.</p><p>“<em>Out</em>,” said he, and put a hand on the butt of the Amban rifle. A minute later the place was as empty as if it were already on fire.</p><p>With a little help from the chief of the village militia, who was pleasantly inclined to listen to the advice of a heavily armed Mandalorian, he managed to herd the villagers across the river and into a nearby grove. By this time it grew dark; and apart from the light of the stars and the fluorescent fish flicking back and forth through the river-water, there was little to illuminate their surroundings.</p><p>The Mandalorian turned on a small flashlight. Its cold blue light made the surrounding trees cast large wobbling shadows.</p><p>The villagers were standing about, muttering to each other, unsure of themselves. The Child clung to his chest plate, breathing quietly but otherwise still. The Mandalorian took a moment to contemplate how monumentally stupid he’d look if nothing happened.</p><p>Then the forest on the other side of the river erupted with a wall of red. Later he’d learn it was a fragment of a larger meteorite, a part of the Kassarid meteor shower. In the moment, however, he merely marvelled at the sheer enormity of it, at the heat he could feel even at that distance and through the fabric of his clothes.</p><p>The cries and exclamations of the villagers reached him as if through a layer of wool. Later, there would be time to calm them; to see if he could help them rebuild; for now, his attention was focused on the kid resting in his arms.</p><p>There was so much power in that little frail body. Power to kill, power to know, power to save.</p><p>In many ways, the Child would never be able to join the Creed. In other ways, the sorcery contained in him was itself the embodiment of the very strength of purpose required by the tenets of the Mandalore.</p><p>But most importantly, the Child was <em>his</em> Child. And although that display of the sheer extent of the kid's talents had been impressive, the fear and pride the Mandalorian felt had little to do with the sorcery itself.</p><p>"Hey," he said, lowering his head to look the kid in the eye. The Child returned his gaze, blinking slowly with delicate eyelids. "You saved a village, womp rat."</p><p><em>You saved me again</em>, he didn't say. But he brought his helmet down and rested it lightly against the crown of the Child's head in a gentle imitation of a kiss.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>